I don’t blame Dan Sansky for hanging up. If I were him, I wouldn’t talk to me. I found Sansky’s cellphone number on his employment application at the County of Lackawanna Transit System (COLTS), where he is maintenance supervisor.
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DICKSON CITY — State Attorney General Josh Shapiro on Saturday, recalling the discrimination Irish immigrants faced when they came to the United States, blasted the prejudice that exists today.
(read more)

Car insurance rates are at an all-time high nationwide and rates are rising fast in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre/Hazleton area, according to a recent study by The Zebra, a car insurance comparison marketplace.
(read more)

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Editor: If the Scranton School District eliminates art and gym classes it will be no loss. I know, I was there.

The way art and gym classes are taught makes classes more like a recess or rest break than learning anything. It is frustrating to students who really want to learn.

Two things I liked were art and weightlifting. I went through 13 years of Scranton public art and gym classes. I never learned anything of value in those classes.

I have a degree in art from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. I spent 10 years working in the advertising and graphics field, including working in New York City for three years, and 20 years working in the printing field. I practiced and studied weightlifting for 30 years.

If public schools want to help these kids, let them graduate one or two years early, let them out of your money-making prison.

Good luck to Scranton teachers who are some of the finest people in our society.

The Career Technology Center of Lackawanna County is a fine school with good skills taught. I had three years of drafting and design and advanced math at its vo-tech predecessor.

Gym class should be training on how to take care of your body, how to stretch, how to train with weights and never get hurt with weightlifting, how to improve and grow muscle through diet and weight training. The basics of staying fit and in shape are not even taught in public schools.

The basics for art are not even taught, such as how to draw from life, how to develop visual thinking, how to create graphics and how to visualize, draw, and create positive and negative space.

JOE CASTAGNARO JR.

SOUTH ABINGTON TWP.

Swamp drain needed

Editor: The final holdup of the Jobs and Tax Cut Bill shows why many Americans are fed up with Washington.

On C-Span, ancient Bernie Sanders appeared on the Senate floor invoking a parliamentary maneuver from a 43-year-old tax bill to remove three meaningless provisions from the massive tax cut bill.

By making this futile, senseless gesture, the 435- member House of Representatives had to revote on the bill the next day.

That’s another example of why the Washington swamp must be drained.

JOHN P. KAMEEN

FOREST CITY

Trickle-down ruse

Editor: The truth is out: President Trump and the Republican Party are a group of self-serving politicians.

They feed their constituents the same line of bull we heard during the era of President Ronald Reagan. Reaganomics and trickle-down economics didn’t work then and won’t work now. The only people it worked for then were the rich and the only people it will work for this time are the rich.

Republicans were elected to serve the people of their districts, but instead they serve corporate America and the 1 percent. They should be ashamed.

I guess when election time comes around again we’ll need to make some changes.

We’re still waiting for the trickle-down effect to occur.

ROBERT A. SAXON

GREENFIELD TWP.

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Speak up, unions

Editor: The new tax reduction for corporations is supposed to increase the amount of work and investments that companies will make in the United States.

However, most analysts think much of the money will be used for stock buybacks. If that is true, the tax reduction does nothing for American workers. This is where unions have a chance to make a positive impact.

Watch to see which companies start to buy back stock. If your company is one of them, it is time for unions to use their collective bargaining power to demand that this money be used for increased wages, or new product investments.

Just a few weeks ago, Gary Cohn, the National Economic Council director, was in attendance when the Wall Street Journal asked a group of CEOs whether they planned to increase their business investment with the cash windfall from the tax plan — none of them were.

Unions must help lead the charge and make sure that business leaders use the money in the way President Trump has promised they would. If the people don’t take the initiative, the powerful will continue to give the profits to themselves. We need to help the union voices be heard again and support their efforts to increase investment in America.

MARK PINSLEY

ALLENTOWN

Key to democracy

Editor: President Trump refused to take reporters’ questions during his recent visit to China. He succumbed to Chinese insistence that no questions be allowed from the press.

Communist China, along with other communist countries, prohibits freedom of the press. The Chinese government controls the press and tells the press what to publish. China is afraid to open up the press to the public because communist shortcomings would be exposed and it could lead to unrest and the pursuit of democratic freedoms.

Unfortunately, Trump went along with the Chinese restrictions on the press as a bargaining chip in his quest to have China eliminate all trade with North Korea.

Trump’s views about the press fit in with China’s restrictions on its media outlets, because Trump would like to control the U.S. press and its reporting on his presidency.

Freedom of the press is a hallmark of a democracy.

DONALD MOSKOWITZ

LONDONDERRY,

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Curb immigration

Editor: How many people must be killed before we realize that chain- and lottery-based immigration should be stopped? Why do we blithely accept people into our country who have a predisposition to hate this nation?

Let’s backtrack. Remember Vietnam. Remember the many immigrants who came from Vietnam. Can we recall the violence inflicted by those immigrants?

Let’s go back a bit further. How many terrorists came to disrupt this country after processing through Ellis Island?

Today, there is a plethora of people who want to destroy our country. They came from foreign shores and don’t want to enhance the American dream, but destroy it.

If we must continue an immigration policy why don’t we encourage people who wish to contribute to our American dream? What is wrong about being positive about America?

JONATHAN MOE

SCRANTON

CLARIFICATION: A letter published on Wednesday and written by Leonard Pietrolaj Jr. was submitted in 2016 and was printed inadvertently.

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